Quilting Designs For The Borders

I know I should have figured out what I wanted to quilt in the borders of my Guild Panel Challenge before I basted and quilted the center but I was just too impatient and figured I would deal with it later.  I got the middle quilted and then came to a complete stop when I didn’t know what to quilt in this approximately 6” wide border.  (I worked really hard to get those wiggly stripes in the black fabric to match on the corners too.)  I wasn’t sure how I would even mark the designs I did come up with but I decided I wanted a curvy border so set about getting my curves figured out and drawn on to long pieces matching the border lengths.  I keep a end roll of newsprint I got from the local newspaper office for free to draw my designs on-check it out to see if your newspaper office has these end rolls for free or little charge. You can cut off large pieces of paper to use to draw long border designs, quilting designs, applique designs or for kids to draw and color on.
I started out drawing the number of sections each border would have and drew a gentle curve to be the center spine of my design.  I had several copies of each of these borders to sketch ideas on in pencil with the spine drawn in a dark black marker.  As you can see I was thinking of curl back parts on the design.  I had several design ideas and tweaked and tweaked the design until I came up with my final design.

Quilting Design Ideas VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Here are the final border designs, drawn out with black and orange marker.  As you can see I abandoned the back curls and I only drew only half the border as the other half is just the same only reversed.
I do like the design and tomorrow I will show and tell you how I got this design transferred to the black border of the basted quilt so stay tuned. 

Until Later,
Lynn

My Sister’s Quilt Top

My sister and her husband just visited us overnight on their way to visit my mother and my sis brought a quilt top she is putting together and I wanted to show you how pretty hand cross-stitched blocks can look.  She cross-stitched these 12 pre-printed blocks at least 10 years ago and had them tucked away ever since then.  She did tell me that the blocks were originally 16” square but she trimmed them down to 14” so there wouldn’t be so much white in the quilt.  You can’t see it too well but there is one row of pink cross-stitches in an design around the flower and leaves in each block.She has pieced a section of scrappy 2” squares to add width between the blocks and added a floral print as sashing around each block.  My photos just don’t show how delicate the blocks look and how springy the quilt will be with the two pink fabrics used in the outside borders between more pieced 2” blocks.
She has a church group lined up to do the hand quilting so is wanting to get the borders on and the quilt ready when they call.  I can’t wait to see it finished. 

My sister has not done a lot of quilt piecing but has sewn her whole life and can stitch up a garment in no time flat and she does a good job on her quilt piecing too.  Both my sisters and I sewed clothing starting from age 7 or 8 as our mother was a great seamstress and taught her daughters to love to sew as well.  Mom is so glad we all still love to sew even though she isn’t able to anymore and always likes to see what projects we are working on.  I am sure she is going to love seeing this pretty pink quilt.

Happy Quilting,
Lynn

Uh-Oh….A Couple Of Quilting Boo-Boos!

I was just whizzing along doing the machine quilting on the guild Panel Challenge and didn’t even know I had a portion turned under, so you can guess what happened.  Yes I quilted part of the edge to the center so had to rip out that part of the quilting and re-do it.  I do remember that the machine seemed to be working hard and I was figuring I would need to change needles and clean out the lint as I thought that might be the problem.
I got it ripped out and was sailing along again and so proud of myself for how the quilting was going.  Had a stopping point so took it out of the machine and spread it out to look at it…..beautiful!  I wondered how the back was looking so flipped it over.  (I was quilting with black thread on the top and gold thread on the back so wondered if the tension was still good as I didn’t want a lot of black thread showing and this is what I saw. 
What a pretty piece of fabric don’t you think?  Very pretty, but it sure doesn’t belong on the back of this quilt and it is two layers of fabric as well.  This is a folded piece that I use for a leader or ender when chain sewing pieces together.  I wonder how it got stuck to the back of my quilt and where it came from?  Wherever it came from I stitched it down good and it had to be removed.  I didn’t want to rip out my stitching so tried a very scary technique as I used a very sharp, skinny pointed scissors to cut just on the outside of the stitches.  I then used tweezers to pull the blue fabric threads from under the stitches.  It took a while but I was successful – YAY!
This procedure is not for the faint of heart to be sure.  There are a few fuzzies of blue still in the stitches but those will be removed with painters tape and even I won't be able to find the spot later. I do have a few black dots of the top thread showing on the back but not bad enough to remove.  Onward now to finish quilting this quilt!

Until later,
Lynn

Another Winner

I am happy to announce that I won another blog giveaway, can you believe it?  This giveaway was from the blog Quilty Pleasures a blog for Quiltmaker Magazine.  I am the recipient of Quiltmaker’s magazine “Small Quilts and Gifts.” and it just came in the mail.  The giveaway was sometime ago and I can’t find the post telling about it right now....I can’t believe it I won another giveaway.  I must do one on my site soon but need to figure out what to give away.  This magazine has lots of small projects but nice looking projects in it.  The patterns and directions are all in there…I can see several that interest me right away.
Check out the Quilty Pleasures blog as there is another big giveaway going on now through Quiltmaker with lots of prizes….I think it is still going on so hurry to check it out.

Until Later,
Lynn